Houston here we come!

It is official! Texas and I will be moving to Houston and I will attend UH Law Center this fall. We put a deposit down this week so I am assured a spot. We are really excited and hopefully will be buying a house. We got pre-approved and will go down next week and do some looking while we are down at Savannah's (Texas' new niece) baby blessing. We are not sure when we are moving but it will be between the end of May and the end of July. We will keep you updated as things happen.

-Kenny

New Fun Link of the Week

Hey Everybody,
I first would like to announce that I am now officially done with Gross Anatomy. I will no longer smell like formaldehyde 3 days of the week! I've also decided that I will never become an anatomy professor. Many of them get so used to the smell that they don't even bother using gloves anymore to touch the cadavers. Plus I have a headache every time I leave the lab, and I remember Tiff telling me once that life with constant headaches isn't too much fun. So Back to the fun link of the week. First, I'm not in any way trying to rag on Missy for leaving the stuffonmycat link up for so long. It's a pain to try to find new, interesting websites. I don't want it changed either because I don't think everyone will be so interested in this. Okay, so the other day Brad was talking about needing a way to get to the cabin when there was a lot of snow (for the Fowkes side, there was enough over spring break to make the trip up mountain a little scary; I think I still have a couple of nail marks from Randi grabbing my arm). So since I'm done with school for the weekend I decided to try to find the website for Lionheart vehicles; a tank dealer out of the UK whose booth I visited when my dad and I went to the SoF convention in Vegas a few (okay, nearly 10) years ago. Unfortunately, Lionheart had a website but it is no more, so I don't know if the company is gone or just it's IT bugget. What I did find was an amazing link of the week. Actually it's a link of three weeks because then it will be gone. The Melbourne Australia Tank Museum is being put up for auction on April 23rd! The museum has several working tanks, including many from the Cold War era (important because they were all made to run in cold weather in case the western world had to invade communist Russia). There are several artillery pieces as well! I know, the shipping charge would be insane, but It's an auction. If you could pick up a working tank for under $10,000 I could easily see dropping $2000-4000 for shipping. Anyway, here's a list of my favorites to make getting to a snow-covered cabin a bit more enjoyable. I have the tanks listed in order of desireability, with the lot number first followed by a description.
45 Frog Flamethrower infantry tank (What snow?)

129 Australian Sentinel (powered by 3 8-cyl cadillac engines)

76 Dynatrac utility carrier (ease of use)

64 aligator amphibous assault (the lake would be more fun)

250 6x6 tank transporter (it MOVES TANKS, it's gotta' have enough traction to get up a mountain, plus having a 6x6 offroad vehicle just totally one-ups the neighbors)

258 Valentine Cruiser Tank (what better way to say, "I love you" to your honey, plus it actually looks like it could get pretty good clearance.)

233 Topaz Full track APC (holds up to 20 people, say goodbye to multiple trips)

243 BSA Solo Miliatry Motercycle (okay, so it's not much good for getting through the snow, but ever since "The Last Crusade" I've realllly wanted one of these.

262 DUKW amphibious jeep (again, not helpful, but I still can't get the idea of driving into a lake out of my head)

Oh, and before I forget, here's the link. New Fun Link of the Week


Enjoy
-C.J.

We're two weeks away from Closing!
You wanna see what it looks like on the inside?

I guess you're just going to have to come over to find out!

Defense

I suppose I should defend myself against my husbands bullying insinuations. I believe that I have not, at any time during my pregnancy, had anything weird to eat. Some of you may ask how that is possible with CJ's latest blog in mind. However, it is true. You see, I had the sweet and sour sauce with my chicken nuggets. On my potato, I had the butter, sour cream, and chives. All of that sounds normal, right?! Well, I finished the chicken nuggest and ate all of the innards of the potato. At that point, I just had the skin of the potato left. I know this is getting long so I will cut to the chase. Skin without anything on it is gross. So, I just dipped it in the sweet and sour sauce to give it some flavor. Is that really so weird? I do not think so. And thus we see why you should never insinuate thing.... just always off base... always off base!
~Randi :-)

Conejito

So, we've had this rabbit that keeps coming into our yard and munching on our weeds. It started out really tiny, but has grown very big in the past 4 four months. It's not a big problem except it LOVES dandelions. So, it eats our dandelions, and then proceeds to poop in our yard. Everywhere there is poop, a brand new batch of dandelions comes up! Anna loves the yellow flowers, but they drive me nuts. We've treated our yard with all sorts of weed killers, but until we can get rid of this bunny, we will have dandelions forever! Tommy doesn't even scare this rabbit anymore (which we have named Conejito - bunny in Spanish). It just looks at him and keeps on munching. Sigh. We have pictures, but the blog won't let me load them right now. Check back later.

Hmmm...

Last night for dinner we went to Wendy's. Randi ate chicken nuggets and a
baked potato with sour cream, butter, chives, and sweet and sour sauce...
"But it's not because I'm pregnant, it tastes good!"
I'm not saying anything.
-C.J.

And the Winner Is...

Appetizers/Finger Foods! Keep in mind with this option that you need to make enough for everyone to have enough to fill them up. It can be anything from meatballs to cheese sticks to pototo skins to guacamole to salsa to egg rolls to fried ravioli. Keep in mind that we agreed last year that anything you've already entered can't be entered again, especially if you won with it! Be creative and we all look forward to sampling the entries next weekend!

Update on the Poll

Just so everyone knows, appetizers/finger foods is winning in the poll with 5 votes. Copy-cat recipes are a close second with 3 votes. Vote now for your pick!

Oh How Lovely Was the Morning...

thought little note from Carrie's last letter was fun. Her letter's are so full of missionary stuff It's nice to know the Carrie we all know and love is still in there somewhere, plus I'd never thought about this before....
-C.J.
P.S. The depiction of an "early spring morning" in the Joseph Smith video is such a lie. Everything is muddy and gross, and there are no leaves on the trees. There is a little bit of sunshine, which is nice, but it is not the lush, beautiful paradise they depict in the first vision. Ok, bye!
Love,
Carrie

Our Favorite Things

I had a bit of extra time on my hands and a friend of mine showed me this site where I could create my own video montage of pictures. So, I uploaded a bunch of pictures and made this video. It's only 3 minutes (no download required), click on this link and see why we love Abby so much!
http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=387cf496fddaf66409a1c

Abby gives it 2 big toes up.

It's FINALLY done!

So, tonight, one week from when we began this project, we finished! We're pretty happy with the way it turned out, and excited that we did it ourselves! (with some help and guidance from Paul) We even put in and hooked up the toilet. That job, I think, was the most disgusting one, but nothing a little bleach couldn't fix. We'll let you know when (or if) we begin our next project!

Pregnancy Countdown!

I found this really fun little pregnancy ticker. I programmed it for Randi so everyone can see how close she is! I'll put one for me on the Saunders Blog. Not that anyone really cares, I just thought it was cool!

Cook-Off

Okay, I have a problem with the cook-off theme ideas, especially the copy-cat one. How are we supposed to judge it? Unless you bring in the item that you are copying, so that there can be a taste comparison, and you can see how close the person got to the original. I don't think it will work! If you don't do that, it's not a copy-cat contest, it's just a regular cook-off. Also, I have no copy-cat recipes that I would like to try, and finding them is kind of hard! Please, can we re-think this one?

Thanks Paul!

First, Danny and I want to thank Paul for taking the time to help us with our tiling project. Danny is now well-versed in the art of tiling, and we're already talking about our next project. The kids' bathroom is not done, yet, so I don't have any pictures, but as soon as it's done, I'll get them to you. We are working on grouting today, and soon we'll get the toilet back in. I'm anxious to get it finished so Anna will stop waking us up in the middle of the night to use our bathroom!

Tiling

Paul took a day off work yesterday and went to help Danny and Melinda tile their bathroom. We need an update and pictures from Melinda!

Get your own blog here!

One thing I like that the Van's do. YES, I'm totally copying their blog. I want ours to be like theirs. They post so frequently and seem to have a good time with it. We're sticks in the mud, ya'll! So I thought if each family had their own blog to post to, we could post just the important stuff on the main blog and link to each of the others. I created one for me and John to show you how easy it is!
Missy and John's Blog
If anyone is interested I can help you out. This way we can be more specific in our posts without worrying about posting tons of stuff on the main blog. Hope everyone's having a great week!

Look!

We have doors!

...and brick!

...and cabinets!

A new way to write

Well I guess it's time to actually buckle down and post something to the family online updates and pictures board. I really don't have a whole lot to write, except that I hope this email thing really works. I wrote on Van's blog earlier and Missy told me I had to write here, too, but really I was just gloating about how cool German is, and I think Danny and Kenny might get a little annoyed if I tried that here. School is still going well. I've told most of you this before, but we're allowed to bring guests into the cadaver lab, so if any of you want to see a real human brain or heart or stomach now's your chance. I know what you're thinking, it's just not the same as a field trip to Wallmart. What can I say? I just can't compete, but what I have I freely offer. In my defence, one person did take me up on the offer to see the brain already. It's good times. Oh, I also share a bone box with 4 other people, so if you don't want to come to school I can bring a skeleton to you (well, 2/3 of a skeleton really; we only get one arm and one leg). I think we're missing the last joint of the pinky finger, too, but I don't remember. That's about all I have that's new. Oh, it's not. I lied. I have one last piece of medical advice to offer. If you put your hands on your hips you feel the two knobs on either side. If you ever have cancer and have those removed, DON'T WALK A MARATHON. I helped with the Cowtown Marathon over the weekend giving physical therapy to people who had run, and a guy came in and his lower back was killing him. I started to stretch the muscle, and it was realllly tight, but it just sort of went on forever. There was no real boarder between his back and his glutes. Well it turns out he had bone cancer and had his iliac crest removed (the bone you feel). His doctor told him he couldn't run anymore, so he decided to walk the marathon to stay in shape. Walk. Jog. Stay healthy. Excercise. Don't try to walk 26 miles in 4 hours. Believe it or not, it does stress your back more than running a mile. Actually, the real moral of the story is that if your doctor tells you not to do something, don't think you're outsmarting him by doing something similar that he didn't explicitly tell you not to do. If you don't want to listen, you don't have to, but don't think that because he didn't tell you you couldn't do it's okay.... Sorry, didn't mean to get preachy. This guy came in holding his back and with a hurt foot because he started to walk funny to take pressure off his back, and he left still holding his back after 40 minutes of physical therapy/manipulation. Crazy. Anyway, I think I've rambled long enough. I hope everyone is doing well and that this helps them to realize that blogging fun doesn't just have to wait until you actually have something to say. With that, Tschau meine Familie.
-C.J.

Texas and Kenny's First Niece!

Texas sent me an email with her new niece and I thought she was cute and definitely post-worthy. :) Her name is Savannah Grace VanOrden and she weighed 8lbs 12oz. They were afraid she was going to have problems with her kidneys and that surgery would be needed, but it looks like she is healthy and it won't be necessary. I'm sure this will the first of many nieces (and more nephews) for Texas and Kenny!